Sports

An interesting tidbit for the English-speaking world is that the opening ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympics will feature the countries taking the field in alphabetical order, but by the Portuguese spelling of the nations. As such some countries, like the United States, which generally enters toward the end of the parade, will find themselves entering early on during the event with the ‘E’s under Estates Unidos. This has even led to the US television networks asking that this be changed, as they fear American TV audiences will quickly turn the channel after they see the American team enter the stadium. Something similar happened in Beijing where the teams entered by ‘stroke’ order of the Chinese alphabet.

In case you are wondering, the USA will be wearing Ralph Lauren again this year.

For a full list of nations in the order they enter, take a look here and plan you viewing accordingly.

Hong Kong, with 7.2 million people and a FIFA ranking in the 100s or so is nowhere near getting into the World Cup Finals this year, but it got me wondering if it is just a matter of not enough people to field a team or something else. So I did a bit of Googling and came up with this list of countries in the World Cup finals, ranked by population.

The NBC Olympics site is really trying some pretty cool things this Olympics. They have Facebook pages and Twitter feeds (both of which allow you to submit questions to the on-air announcers), but one of the newer items is a real time Twitter visualization so you can see what the Tweeting masses are talking about as they watch the games. This is a pretty neat capture of what folks are talking about in real time, and I can’t wait to see it tonight when some announcer says something dumb. Will be interesting to watch.

Couple interesting vessels today. The first was a destroyer leaving Annapolis and making its way back toward Norfolk. Turns out it was the USS Cole, famous from the attack in Yemen a few years back. It was in Annapolis for the homecoming game (which Navy lost miserably to Pitt).

The second is the Gazela Primerio, a barquentine heading toward Baltimore for the annual clipper race which will be in a few days.

After the Cole was attacked it was ferried back to the US for repairs.

Navy’s slot back ran for 348 yards on 19 carries. Navy won 41-13 or so, but quite honestly, I’m exhausted. Towson State threw the ball nearly every play and dropped it nearly every other time, so the clock moved about as slowly as humanly possible for a football game. Socked in the heat and humidity, and eventually playing to the point that the lights had to be turned on, many of the 31,000 didn’t even stay past halftime.

While most Americans are watching the opening ceremony (on tape delay) the events have already gotten underway in China, with http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7550802.stm#mce_temp_url# (of likely many) protests. Two students attempted to display a Tibetan flag at the dressage competition and were promptly removed by security police.

For those who didn’t know, due to some of the equestrian diseases that are present on the mainland (but not in Hong Kong) the Olympic committee opted to move all the horse events to Hong Kong where they will be held at the Sha Tin raceway and a new facility built especially for the Olympics.

The Baltimore Orioles are pretty bad this year. I’ve lost track of how many they’ve lost in a row, but it has to be over a dozen by now. Few people even bother to show up at Camden (I suspect a few of the DC folks are now heading to the UFO-style spaceship called Nationals Park located in DC).

There is one bright spot in Baltimore though. Mike Palulis, a dedicated member of the grounds crew. He is a fan favorite, and he runs with an energy (and speed) that actually gets the crowd standing up and cheering.

Did a quick search and there is no video on Youtube yet. There is a general one of the crew doing a ‘drag’ of the base lines but not sure if he is in it. There is also a picture on the homepage but not sure how long it will be there. We’ll see what the other bloggers come up with over the day.

Ok, if you’ve been uninterested or unmotivated to watch the Tour de France up to this point, the time is now to tune in. Coverage starts most days at about 8:30am on the Versus channel, which was formerly known as Outdoor Life Nework.

Yesterday the Tour started up in the Alps, where it will be for the next two days. The three top leaders are separated by all of about 10 seconds, and it is in the mountains that time shifts are the most vast. Tuesday and Wednesday see them up in the Alps, and this is probably where we’ll see the winner come forth, eventhough there is about a week of racing before Paris.